Let There Be Light

I think we all take modern conveniences like running water and electricity for granted until we don’t have them. Living on Florida’s central coast, we are not immune to hurricanes and bad storms, and power does go out once in a while. Fortunately, the good folks at Florida Power and Light (FPL) are usually pretty quick about getting it back on in a timely manner.

Even after a couple of bad hurricanes, when power was out for a few days, crews from all over the country came down to help. And if worse comes to worst, we do have two Honda generators that we can fire up to power our refrigerators and even a window air conditioner if necessary. Fortunately, we haven’t had a bad storm like that in over three years now.

But yesterday, in the middle of a beautiful afternoon, our neighbor Jennifer from across the street was here visiting when about 4:30 the power went out. We do have Tripp Lite battery backup power supplies on my computer and printer and our two televisions. It makes life a lot easier when you don’t have to lose your work due to something like that. Sometimes we get little glitches that clear up within a few seconds or no more than a minute, but not yesterday. The power went out and stayed out.

I went to FPL’s website and it said crews were working to restore the power, but it might be out until about 7:15 or so. And sure enough, within a few minutes a couple of FPL trucks rolled into the neighborhood and started working.

Fortunately, it was a nice afternoon with the temperatures in the mid to upper 70s and a nice breeze blowing, so with the doors open in the house we were comfortable. I’m sure glad it happened now instead of a month ago when it was in the upper 90s every day!

7:15 came and went and still no power, so I rechecked the FPL website. Then it said that we could expect power by 9:30. Well how fun is that? Not really all that fun, to be honest with you. But Terry has a lot of battery-powered lamps around the house, so we could see as it got dark.

About 8 o’clock I got another message from FPL saying that the power might not be on until 11:30. No problem, we kept our refrigerators closed so we knew we weren’t going to have a problem there, and I didn’t feel it was worth getting the generators out and firing them up. We had cold sandwiches and chips for dinner and were doing fine, then sometime around 9:45, the power came back on! So we didn’t get the 7:15 time they originally promised, but it was better than 11:30, right?

And not everything is bad when you have an inconvenience like that. We learned how to do a couple of things. Terry finished the book she was reading on her Kindle Paperwhite and wanted to order the next book in the series, but with the power out, our Wi-Fi was down. So I quickly Googled how to use my Samsung phone as a Wi-Fi hotspot, turned it on, and she was able to download the book. See, we learned something. Who says you can’t teach a couple of old dogs new tricks?

And we learned something else. I didn’t realize that when we got our new Sony smart TV, I had plugged it into the surge protector side of the Tripp Lite , but not the battery backup side, so it went off. And when the power did come back on, we had to reprogram the darn thing again from start. I thought it would save those settings, but apparently not.

And finally, here’s a chuckle to start your day from the collection of funny signs we see in our travels and that our readers share with us.

It’s Thursday and that means it’s time for a new Free Drawing. This week’s prize is an audiobook of Birdsongs, the first book in my friend Jason Deas’ excellent Benny James mystery series. To enter, all you have to do is click on this Free Drawing link or the tab at the top of this page and enter your name in the comments section at the bottom of that page (not this one). Only one entry per person per drawing please, and you must enter with your real name. To prevent spam or multiple entries, the names of cartoon or movie characters are not allowed. The winner will be drawn Sunday evening. Note: Due to the high shipping cost of printed books and Amazon restrictions on e-books to foreign countries, only entries with US addresses and e-mail addresses are allowed.

Thought For The Day – Someone who is ignorant doesn’t know something we learned an hour ago.